Pianocéan, a project by Anne-Lise Le Pellec and Marieke Huysmans-Berthou

After studying philosophy at university, Anne-Lise Le Pellec set out to travel the world for ten years. As an artist, photographer, author and reporter, she added another medium to her portfolio when she became a street musician in Ireland. She began the Pianocéan project with Marieke Huysmans-Berthou in 2014, dividing her time between touring, photography and writing. Her collaborator Marieke Huysmans-Berthou is from Isère and is as passionate about Ireland as she is. She has been singing, composing and performing her pieces on stage at the piano for many years. She was the instigator of the Pianocéan concept in 2015: Her sailboat is equipped with an upright piano, mounted on a lift system, from which she performs concerts from the deck during each stopover. 

Intended to bring music and navigation together, the Pianocéan project combines the crew's passions. Since 2015, Marieke Huysmans-Berthou has taken the name of her sailboat, "Lady Flow", as her stage name and given concerts on the quayside, where her piano is taken out of the boat's hold and placed on the deck. Every evening, she plays her compositions in front of a different audience, speaking with them after the performance. Featuring anecdotes about their travels and performances of their songs, Pianocéan is financed by ticket and album sales but remains free to all spectators. 

With Pianocéan, Anne-Lise Le Pellec and Marieke Huysmans-Berthou transcribe the cultures and landscapes on their travels in a show that is different at every stopover. With a core of Celtic inspiration, they intertwine artistic disciplines around moving compositions and invitations to travel destined for the audience. Intended to last at least ten years, with a minimum of five months of sailing each year, the Pianocéan concept has seen these two friends travel 5,000 nautical miles and perform more than 400 concerts to date. 

These two accomplices have been sailing around the world with Pianocéan since 2015. Although the boat does not sail during the winter, it explores new cities each spring. On their first trip, they toured the Mediterranean, before departing for Brittany. In 2019, Anne-Lise Le Pellec and Marieke Huysmans-Berthou returned to Ireland, home to their first musical love. In the same year, they published a book in which they retrace their story and the crazy birth of this project. After the Covid-19 pandemic, they finally set sail again for Scotland in spring 2021.